No Spiritual Landscaping: The Altar and the Asherah Text: Deuteronomy 16:21-22
Introduction: The Allure of the Hybrid
We live in an age that worships the hybrid, the blend, the fusion. We see it in our food, in our music, in our politics. The great modern virtue is inclusivity, which sounds pleasant enough until you realize that it is a demand to mix things that God has commanded to be kept separate. Our culture wants to blend light and darkness, good and evil, truth and falsehood, and call the resulting grey sludge "tolerance." This impulse is not new. It is as old as the Garden, where the serpent first suggested that God's clear prohibition was really just a starting point for a broader, more inclusive conversation.
This desire to blend, to compromise, to have it both ways, is particularly potent when it comes to worship. Man in his fallen state does not want to abandon worship entirely; he simply wants to be the chairman of the worship committee. He wants to worship God, but he also wants to keep his options open. He wants the security of Yahweh, but the sensual thrill of Baal. He wants the God of the Bible, but he wants to decorate the sanctuary with the idols of the Canaanites. This is called syncretism, and it is the constant temptation of the people of God in every generation. It is the attempt to have the altar of Yahweh and the Asherah pole of the pagans side by side, as though they could be friendly neighbors.
But God is not interested in being part of a spiritual pantheon. He is not running for a position on a board of deities. He is the sovereign Lord of all, and He demands exclusive, pure, and unadulterated worship. He does not just want a piece of your heart; He wants the whole thing. He does not want His altar to be the main attraction with a few pagan curiosities on the side. He wants His altar to be the only thing standing. In these two brief verses, God lays down a foundational principle of worship that is a direct application of the first two commandments. He tells Israel, and by extension He tells us, that when it comes to worship, there is no room for syncretism. You cannot serve two masters, and you cannot landscape the area around God's altar with the trees of a false goddess.
The Text
"You shall not plant for yourself an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of Yahweh your God, which you shall make for yourself. And you shall not set up for yourself a sacred pillar which Yahweh your God hates."
(Deuteronomy 16:21-22 LSB)
The Polluted Proximity (v. 21)
We begin with the first prohibition, which deals with the sin of addition and mixture.
"You shall not plant for yourself an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of Yahweh your God, which you shall make for yourself." (Deuteronomy 16:21)
First, what is an Asherah? An Asherah was typically a wooden pole, a carved image, or even a living tree that was dedicated to the Canaanite fertility goddess of the same name. She was considered the consort of the chief god, El, and was also associated with Baal. Her worship was a nature cult, deeply tied to the cycles of the seasons, and it was invariably sexualized and debased. It involved ritual prostitution and all manner of degradation. It was everything that the holy worship of Yahweh was not.
Now notice the precise nature of the command. God does not simply say, "Do not worship Asherah." He has already made that abundantly clear. The command here is more specific, and more insidious. He says not to plant one "beside the altar of Yahweh your God." This is the very picture of syncretism. This is the attempt to have it all. It is saying, "Yes, we will worship Yahweh. He is our God who brought us out of Egypt. We will build His altar. But... the Canaanites seem to be having a lot of fun. Their crops seem to be growing. Their worship is exciting and sensual. Let's not be narrow-minded. Let's bring a little of that in. We can have the altar, which represents God's holiness and atonement, and right next to it, we can have the Asherah pole, which represents... well, let's just call it 'cultural engagement.'"
This is the sin of wanting to serve God on your own terms. Notice the phrase, "which you shall make for yourself." The altar is for Yahweh, but the decision to place an Asherah next to it is a human innovation. This is the essence of the violation of the Second Commandment. The Second Commandment is not just about avoiding false gods (that's the First Commandment). It's about not worshipping the true God in a false way, a way that He has not prescribed. It's about not adding our own bright ideas to the worship He has instituted.
Whenever the church tries to make its worship more "relevant" by borrowing from the world's playbook, it is planting an Asherah beside the altar. When we adopt the world's therapeutic methods for counseling, its pragmatic techniques for church growth, or its entertainment-driven models for worship services, we are engaging in this same spiritual landscaping. We are saying that the simple altar of God, the preaching of the cross, is not quite sufficient. It needs a little something extra, a little pagan foliage to spruce it up and make it more appealing to the surrounding culture. But God is not looking for creative decorators; He is looking for obedient worshippers.
The Abhorrent Object (v. 22)
The second prohibition reinforces the first, but with a powerful emotional declaration from God Himself.
"And you shall not set up for yourself a sacred pillar which Yahweh your God hates." (Deuteronomy 16:22 LSB)
A sacred pillar, or massebah, was a standing stone. In the pre-Mosaic era, patriarchs like Jacob set up pillars as memorials to mark a place where God had appeared (Genesis 28:18). But by this point, these pillars had been thoroughly co-opted by the Canaanites as objects of their idolatrous cults, often serving as phallic symbols in their fertility rites. What might have once been an innocent memorial had become a polluted instrument of idolatry. And so God bans them from His worship. The principle is clear: even if something had a legitimate use in a previous era, if it becomes hopelessly entangled with paganism, it must be discarded.
But the crucial part of this verse is the last phrase: "which Yahweh your God hates." This is not the language of detached, philosophical disapproval. This is the language of covenantal passion. God is not a stoic deity, indifferent to how He is approached. He is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5). He is a husband who is jealous for the exclusive affection of His bride, Israel. Idolatry is not merely a procedural error; it is spiritual adultery. It is a profound betrayal of a loving relationship.
When Israel set up these pillars, they were setting up objects that their divine husband loathed. Imagine a wife who insists on keeping photographs of an old lover all over the bedroom she shares with her husband. When he objects, she says, "But what's the big deal? I still love you. This is just a piece of paper. I'm just trying to be inclusive of my past." Any sane husband would see this not as inclusivity, but as a deep and painful betrayal. This is how God views our attempts to mix pagan elements with His pure worship. He hates it. It is an abomination to Him because it cheapens His glory and violates the intimacy of the covenant He has made with us.
This word "hates" should jolt us out of our modern, therapeutic sensibilities. We are often told that hatred is always a bad thing. But the Bible is clear that there are things God hates, and therefore, things we ought to hate. God hates idolatry. He hates pride, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood (Proverbs 6:16-19). A holy love for God necessitates a holy hatred for that which He hates. If we are indifferent to the presence of sacred pillars in our worship, whether they be ancient stones or modern ideologies, it is a sure sign that our love for God has grown cold.
Conclusion: Tearing Down Our High Places
These two verses are a sharp razor, intended to make a clean cut between the worship of God and the worship of the world. There can be no peaceful coexistence. You cannot have the cross of Christ and the Asherah of cultural relevance standing side-by-side in the sanctuary of the church, or in the sanctuary of your heart.
The history of Israel is a sad commentary on their failure to heed this command. From the time of the Judges to the final days of the kingdom, the besetting sin of the people was this very syncretism. They kept the temple, they kept the sacrifices, but they also built high places, planted Asherah poles, and set up sacred pillars on every high hill and under every green tree (1 Kings 14:23). The story of every faithful reformer, from Hezekiah to Josiah, was a story of tearing these things down. Reformation always involves destruction. It means taking an axe to the Asherah poles and smashing the sacred pillars that have been allowed to accumulate beside God's altar.
We must ask ourselves, what are our modern Asherahs? What are the culturally acceptable idols that we have planted right next to the altar of God? Is it the idol of pragmatism, where we judge our worship by what "works" rather than by what God has commanded? Is it the idol of emotionalism, where we seek a subjective experience rather than a true encounter with the holy God? Is it the idol of political ideology, whether from the right or the left, that we allow to shape our preaching and our fellowship more than the plain Word of God?
And what are our sacred pillars, the things God hates that we have come to tolerate and even cherish? Is it a tolerance for sexual sin that redefines what God has declared holy in marriage? Is it a love for money that turns the church into a business and the gospel into a product? Is it a pride in our own traditions that elevates them to the level of Scripture?
The command is to have nothing beside the altar. The altar, where the blood of the sacrifice is shed, must stand alone. For us, that altar is the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross is the sole and sufficient center of our worship, our life, and our salvation. To add anything to it is to pollute it. To place any other hope beside it is to commit spiritual adultery. God calls us to a pure and exclusive devotion. Let us therefore be ruthless in tearing down any idol, any Asherah, any pillar that stands in competition. Let us worship the God who hates mixture, and who has given us everything in His Son, so that we would need nothing and no one else beside Him.